There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
This was the verse of the day when I opened my Bible app this morning, and I feel led to respond. We’ll get back to the Hall of Faith tomorrow.
There’s a lot of talk about how we should treat one another. We should be kind. We should be inclusive. The list could go on for a long time. Memes are shared of kids of European and African descent playing together, with the message that we are taught to hate. The probably unwitting, probably unintended message of that meme is that there are nasty parents out there who teach their kids to hate, and we should hate them! There are also people whose response would be, “Yes, and that hate is all the fault of toxic White men.” (To which I say, “Um, you clearly learned your lessons well.”)
The reality is that we are all likely to learn to hate just by living. We see this person or that person get what we want, and we build a pattern. The media and politicians don’t help. Some spread hatred: “Those lousy, good-for-nothing, lazy, worthless ________s.” Some mean well but spread hatred none the less. “We agree with you that there is crime in your neighborhoods. We aren’t going to stop pushing until the crime is eradicated.” So the newspaper gets filled with stories about the crime among this group or that, and then wonder why people start thinking of the people in that group as being criminals. They publicly mourn the misfortunes of one group of people or another, and those who aren’t of that group look around, see their own misfortunes and become angry because no one stands up for them.
“We’re all us,” some say, but some of us are more equal than others. Some can legally force people to do as they want, while others are told that they may not even ask. And all the while, those who enforce the unequal equality polish their apples. “Aren’t we doing a good job?” Yes. They’re doing a very good job of sowing hatred. And then they post their “hatred is taught” memes.
The reality is that the only way for their to be unity is for each of us to give up our identity politics. I’m not saying “get rid of labels” because the labels are just the words that we attach to the target of our hatred. Removing the label doesn’t remove the hatred. We can’t just stop categorizing one another, and denying that our experience has any validity is dangerous.
What we need is to reframe, and the new frame has to be more powerful, and more important than the old. Yes, that person may be a _____, but more importantly, that person is a _________. The first blank may refer to something we don’t like, but the second is something we love. That person may be a _______, but that no longer matters, because that person is one of us. Even that only works if the second something is more powerful than the first. There must be something that has greater authority in our lives than ourselves.
There’s a lot of talk about how we should treat one another. We should be kind. We should be inclusive. The list could go on for a long time. Memes are shared of kids of European and African descent playing together, with the message that we are taught to hate. The probably unwitting, probably unintended message of that meme is that there are nasty parents out there who teach their kids to hate, and we should hate them! There are also people whose response would be, “Yes, and that hate is all the fault of toxic White men.” (To which I say, “Um, you clearly learned your lessons well.”)
The reality is that we are all likely to learn to hate just by living. We see this person or that person get what we want, and we build a pattern. The media and politicians don’t help. Some spread hatred: “Those lousy, good-for-nothing, lazy, worthless ________s.” Some mean well but spread hatred none the less. “We agree with you that there is crime in your neighborhoods. We aren’t going to stop pushing until the crime is eradicated.” So the newspaper gets filled with stories about the crime among this group or that, and then wonder why people start thinking of the people in that group as being criminals. They publicly mourn the misfortunes of one group of people or another, and those who aren’t of that group look around, see their own misfortunes and become angry because no one stands up for them.
“We’re all us,” some say, but some of us are more equal than others. Some can legally force people to do as they want, while others are told that they may not even ask. And all the while, those who enforce the unequal equality polish their apples. “Aren’t we doing a good job?” Yes. They’re doing a very good job of sowing hatred. And then they post their “hatred is taught” memes.
The reality is that the only way for their to be unity is for each of us to give up our identity politics. I’m not saying “get rid of labels” because the labels are just the words that we attach to the target of our hatred. Removing the label doesn’t remove the hatred. We can’t just stop categorizing one another, and denying that our experience has any validity is dangerous.
What we need is to reframe, and the new frame has to be more powerful, and more important than the old. Yes, that person may be a _____, but more importantly, that person is a _________. The first blank may refer to something we don’t like, but the second is something we love. That person may be a _______, but that no longer matters, because that person is one of us. Even that only works if the second something is more powerful than the first. There must be something that has greater authority in our lives than ourselves.
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